Some councilors ‘out of the loop’ as colleagues leaned on county official

by peter roper
the pueblo chieftain

Published: August 3, 2014;Last modified: August 5, 2014 11:35AM

Just before City Council held its first town hall meeting in May to discuss redirecting the city’s half-cent sales tax for job recruitment, a caller to The Pueblo Chieftain asked why Greg Severance, a Pueblo County employee, was designing the flyers inviting the public to the meeting.

When Severance was called, his terse answer to the reporter was, “Who wants to know?”

Told the newspaper did, Severance confirmed he produced the flyers but said his role was to help city staff identify streets that needed repair. After all, he was Pueblo County transportation director.

A Chieftain review of official emails between Severance and council members since May 1 show that Severance has played a much larger role in advising three members — Chris Kaufman, Sandy Daff and Ami Nawrocki — on all the major city issues this year.

Severance, while a county employee whose job description focuses on transportation issues, has advised those council members on how to put more scrutiny on the Pueblo Economic Development Corp., how to refuse a $14.5 million loan to the Pueblo Urban Renewal Authority and even how to deal with local trash haulers.

His emails sometimes have the tone of marching orders, instructing those council members on what steps to take, how to deal with the media and, in some cases, drawing those council members into illegal, online council meetings where decisions were being made.

Here is his June 3 email to Ami Nawrocki about getting more financial information from PEDCO:

“First order of business — whack (Ken) Conyers (PEDCO member) per our discussion today. Ask Sam (Azad, city manager) and Dan (Kogovsek, city attorney) to obtain all consultant, special services, design and construction contracts awarded by PEDCO for past 5 years . . .” the message goes on to list other records to obtain.

Severance briefly worked for Conyers at Matrix Design Group after he was fired as county public works director.

When the city legal staff notified Ami Nawrocki they were drawing up a resolution to refuse the $14.5 million loan request from the urban renewal authority to pay for an exhibition hall, she sent a note to Severance on June 4, saying: “Let me know your thoughts, asap.”

The Chieftain review obtained hundreds of official city and county emails between the three. There also are references to cutting off public discussion and switching to private email where message records can’t be obtained by the public.

Severance’s role was not known among all council members. Councilman Steve Nawrocki said he’d wondered why the county staffer was attending all the town hall meetings.

“I had no idea my colleagues were leaning on Mr. Severance so closely for advice. I was clearly being left out of the loop on these discussions, some of which are troubling to read about,” he said.

Councilman Chris Nicoll also was “out of the loop,” but he’d already clashed with Kaufman and Daff in the spring, charging they were having illegal, closed-door discussions about redirecting the half-cent tax proceeds to city improvements. That was Kaufman’s plan to ask voters to use portions of the half-cent revenue for a program he called the Great Pueblo Payback.

When Nicoll queried Ami Nawrocki why Severance was taking part in a lunch with two leaders of the local trash haulers, Frank and Becky Cortese, she rebuffed him with the answer: “Mr. Severance is a personal friend of Mrs. Cortese,” adding it was Severance who arranged the informal meeting.

Becky Cortese confirmed that it was Severance who called them, offering to become an intermediary with council to resolve the local haulers’ issues over a possible city enterprise to oversee mandatory trash collection.

But it also was Severance who gave the three council members a “Bazooka Plan” for steamrolling the haulers when discussions broke down. That plan urged them to hire the city trash consultant the haulers feared and get the study underway before the haulers could stop it with a ballot petition.

That July 5 email finished this way: “When your enemy brings a knife to a fight, you bring a Bazooka.”

Kaufman wrote back, “I’m in.” Ami Nawrocki said, “I completely agree.” Only Daff stopped short of giving her opinion in what was essentially an illegal council meeting.

Daff confirmed in an interview she withheld her opinion because she knew the email exchange had crossed the line of legality.